A Change of Plans: A New Strategy For My 2020 OTC Archery Deer Hunt

“A Change of Plans”

A New Strategy For My 2020 OTC Archery Deer Hunt

Written By: Stephen Miller, BowhuntingAZ

Back in I go! After an early tag out on the opening day of august 2019's archery over the counter deer season, I'm extremely excited to be revisiting my previously developed spot for 2020's upcoming archery hunt. I've backed off my spot completely after August's harvest and pulled all of my trail cameras to allow the rifle hunters their space and keep my gear safe from any potential thieves. I hunt public land here in Arizona and although it may have been unnecessary to pull my cams it made me sleep better at night. There's a handful of late rifle tags that will finish out the year but the main wave of hunters is over mid-November.

Once things start to settle down, I'll then begin to settle in. Revisiting old spots to see what signs of human traffic are present. How much disturbance if any, has been asserted onto the landscape and of course several thorough glassing sessions will be all be a part of the development into how I approach a new year hunt. Throughout the summer and into the fall I've been e-scouting. Utilizing Flatline Maps and Google earth I've found some new spots within the old that look like they'd do pretty well at holding an elusive giant buck away from the common hunting population. Once that final day of the season closes I'll begin to work my way in little by little and establish a camera network. I'll begin with my original hunting grounds, where I know there's wildlife traffic and assess what the inventory is of bucks that have survived. Hopefully, my target buck is still alive and well. Once I capture what I'm looking for on-camera I'll begin to systematically work in the direction he's traveling from. My goal this year is to find their bedding grounds. I have an idea already of where that may be but I want to better understand their travel corridors.

I've had this project in mind for some time now. Systematically working each camera back week by week to track travel corridors just seems like something fun to do. I'm not quite decided yet on how far apart I'll be stretching the series of cameras. I want to be able to easily define pinch points and areas for ambush hunts. Placing two cameras relatively close but facing in different directions might be advantageous here. If you were to look at a satellite view of the landscape you'd see a mixture of heavily vegetated spots with droplets of open meadows strewn around. This makes the typical spot and stalk hunting difficult as you're not always able to see clearly into the next pocket. I've had success so far with ambush-style hunting and will most likely look to utilize that again once I know where my target buck will be traveling consistently.

Swarovski 15x56 SLC, Rented from Open Country Optics https://www.opencountryoptics.com/

Gear acquisition syndrome is a never-ending curse. We'll never truly know just how many trail cameras a hunter needs and I think we all struggle with it. I have 6 as of right now, soon to be 8 and I'm feeling pretty content with that number. During my elk season, I operated with 3 and my hunting buddy also had 3. That seemed to cover our whole unit pretty well. I feel as though anything over 10 and it starts to become quite the chore to position, check, card swap & maintain all of those cameras. But, to each their own!

Overall I think this project is something that will help me grow and better understand the deer. How deer move before and during the rut, their overall behavior and getting into the mindset of a buck is one of the top things we pursue as hunters. Especially as the rut arrives here in late December, it will be interesting to see what new bucks move in that are looking for the ladies' companionship. I know my approach isn't the only way for a hunter to come at this, but I hope that by learning as I go I can share my experiences and we can all walk away with new tactics and knowledge to apply in future seasons to come. It's always advantageous to expose yourself to the maximum amount of knowledge you can get and then cherry-pick those tidbits that best fit your situation for yourself. That is the true art of mastering the hunt. Your hunt.

Conquering my Dark Mountain with Kodiak Pre-Workout: https://darkmountain.com/

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